October 13th, 2008
I received an email from a cousin recently that really got me thinking. He owns a small business, and he believes government should stay out of people’s lives. He wants lower taxes and less regulation. He believes people should stand on their own two feet.
But how about the fact that his kids attended public school? What about the daughter who is currently attending a state funded university? What about the miles and miles of roads he drives to get anywhere? What about fire, police and trash removal? Are these the proper functions of government, or should he be paying for his use of these amenities?
To keep things simple, let’s accept those amenities as a given. The vast majority of Americans are not averse to paying taxes for public education, emergency services and roads.
Suppose his neighbor down the street loses his job. His company goes under, and he’s laid off. As a small business owner my cousin has been paying for unemployment insurance for decades. He doesn’t like paying it and thinks it’s an unfair burden on small business owners. Maybe so. I’ve been a small business owner, and I thought it really unfair that my husband and I would never collect on the unemployment taxes we paid on our own salaries. Still, what would you do for the neighbor who lost his job? Should he be on his own? Should unemployment taxes be paid by the entire taxpayer base instead of employers?
As a result of the stress of losing his job, the neighbor’s marriage falls apart. His wife has few skills, and she has spent the last two years taking care of small children. Because her husband is unemployed, he can’t help with child support. Sure they could stay together until things settle down, but it’s getting pretty nasty in that household. Should the mom rely on charity? Donations can be iffy sometimes, so maybe she should count on family members. But what if those aren’t an option?
Oh, I know we all have the image of welfare moms in our minds, but that situation ended quite a few years ago. There are now education requirements and limits on the time someone can collect welfare. And even if our goal is to keep moms off the dole, what about the kids? Is it a proper government function to keep our youngest citizens healthy and fed?
That was a fictional story of a possible neighbor of my cousin. Let’s tackle a bigger issue. If we are to stand on our own two feet and be self-sufficient, if we are to be empowered to make our own decisions concerning things like health care, what protections do we have against the in-house legal departments of companies that do us ill? Is it the role of government to regulate insurance companies? Is it the role of government to inspect our food and drugs to make sure the things we ingest are safe? Is it the role of government to test imports to keep lead out of toys?
If government doesn’t do it, who will? I don’t have the wherewithal to sue an insurance company for denying me the treatment I might need. I know I don’t have a lab that can test for melamine in my dog’s food, and I don’t have the equipment to test my water, spinach, tomatoes and beef. Do you think maybe this is something that all of us taxpayers can agree is something that we should spend our money on?
There is much to think about here. We taxpayers pay for many things, and it is time we define what it is we expect government to do for us. Personally I think we’re all in this together and we have a responsibility to look out for each other. It’s the moral thing to do.
Categories: Commentary, Economy, Politics, Taxes |
Tags: education, Government, health, insurance, regulation, regulations, Taxes, unemployment, welfare | 1 Comment
October 8th, 2008
One of the consistent themes of conservatives is smaller government and how we’ll all save lots of money if only government were smaller. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Last year tens of thousand of pets died because melamine was put in pet food as a substitute for protein. Not long after that hundreds of Americans became sick from what we were originally told was tomatoes from Mexico. It turned out not to be tomatoes and the correct vegetable may not have come from Mexico, but hey, what the heck. Our beef cannot be exported to many countries because of fear of Mad Cow disease. Recently there was a big scandal in China with babies being poisoned by melamine in milk products. Initially we were assured that no tainted products had made their way into this country, but that’s not quite true. Melamine is showing up all over the place. For years now people have been complaining that their generic drugs are not performing as well as the name-brand drugs the generics are meant to substitute for. In some cases the generics are actually making people sick.
Smaller government means fewer inspectors at the Food & Drug Administration. Not to be facetious, but how’s that working for you?
Smaller government is a conservative canard. Yes, they mean cutting federal employees, but when they aren’t out to gut an agency they don’t believe in (like the FDA and it’s regulations on the pharmaceutical industry), they actually mean turning over government services to private industry. What a recipe for corruption. We’ve all seen the no-bid contracts coming out of the Iraq war, but I’m sure there are many more of these things that we don’t know about.
I remember when this discussion got started in the Reagan administration. Government bureaucracy at the time was bloated and unresponsive. Good luck finding friendly help when you called anyone. We were told this would all be fixed and money would be saved by having private business perform many government functions. It all made perfect sense.
And I have a bridge for sale.
The next administration, whoever it is, must cooperate with Congress, and Congress must actually do its job in ferreting out the corruption that has occurred under this administration. Money needs to be returned to the treasury and people need to go to jail. And we all have to think about what it really means when a politician says he or she is promoting smaller government.
Categories: Commentary, Government, Politics |
Tags: Congress, FDA, mad cow, melamine, money, pets, pharmaceutical, regulations | No Comments
October 8th, 2008
We all know people who have known what they wanted to be when they grew up from the time they were in diapers. It’s nauseating, but yes, they are out there. Others of us bumble around and with luck figure it out at some point in college. I am really sorry for the people who learn they detest bodily fluids right after finishing medical school. What a colossal waste of time and money.
And then there are those of us who get it together in our fifties. I finally figured it out. For decades I’ve thought of myself as being a Renaissance Woman, interested in anything and everything and never able to make up my mind what I want to be when I grow up. Like an ADD sufferer, and with no disrespect intended, I tend to ricochet from topic to topic. But unlike people with ADD, I have never had any difficulty focusing and giving things my complete attention. Quite the contrary. I immerse myself in a subject until I have my fill or I am pulled away by circumstances. The trouble has been that the end of the class never coincides with my fill of the subject. I want to know more.
When we moved to North Carolina, I was ready to switch careers. Instead of the real estate I’d been practicing for 20+ years, I wanted to get into database design. I enrolled in classes at Wake Technical Community College, racked up a nice 4.0 average, and ultimately learned that the world of programming and database design isn’t particularly open to women over forty. Sigh. Database design is now my therapy, and I’ve designed and am currently using a very nice little property management program.
After my forties’ adventure with changing careers, I went back to class, became licensed to practice real estate in North Carolina, and went back to what I knew. Besides real estate sales, we manage a few properties for other people, and that is where my nice little property management database program comes into play.
Okay, I’m now in my fifties, and at last I know what I want to be when I grow up. Over the years I’ve learned much about real estate and mortgages and consumer loans and many things that affect people’s finances. After decades of working with tenants and their reasons for being late with the rent, I’ve learned a thing or two about what gets people into financial trouble. I can’t count the number of hours I’ve spent telling people that it’s really a good idea to pay first for the roof over their heads and only much later for clothing, movies and restaurants.
It is because of this that I know what a great product the Money Merge Account system is. With my knowledge of programming and finance, I know that United First Financial has come up with one heck of a concept. The idea itself isn’t complicated, but the mechanics behind it are. I wish I’d thought of it myself.
So now, as I slowly approach middle age (we baby boomers will not be going quietly), I have found something I really want to spend my life doing. What better way to spend my time than to help people to become debt free? What better use of my time than to help people realize their dreams when they are no longer burdened by monthly payments? What better way for me to help people work through their financial problems? All of these things are possible with the Money Merge Account system.
If you’d like to learn more, please click here: United First Financial
Categories: Commentary, Personal Finance |
Tags: Debt, debt free, finance, medical, Money Merge Account, Mortgage, North Carolina, real estate, United First Financial | Comments Off
